


Collateral

by anneapocalypse



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 07:44:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2724323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Bullshit</i> is probably the most detailed answer you’re going to get as to why a certain high-ranking flight officer in your shady-ass military operation was, without warning, grounded and relegated to a shitty desk job.</p><p>Obligatory handwave for the lack of continuity between season 8 and the Freelancer seasons, etc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> "If you're not at the top of that board, you're not worth anything to him."  
> -Agent Connecticut

_Bullshit_ is probably the most detailed answer you’re going to get as to why a certain high-ranking flight officer in your shady-ass military operation was, without warning, grounded and relegated to a shitty desk job.

You believe it. You know all about _bullshit_ , languishing as you have for months on Gamma Squad kissing ass and running shit missions, supply runs and low-level intel a fucking greasemonkey could handle. Even now, after damn near all of Alpha Squad’s deserted or dead, the Director never updates the damn board so you’re still stuck on Gamma Squad. Good riddance to all of them, too. Don’t let the airlock hit you. Jesus. Fat lot of good their attempted mutiny did. For you or your pilot friend here.

Not that she was _your_ pilot. Pffft. Please. Gamma Squad. Not even good enough to make Recovery Agent when all hell broke loose. Now you get some lousy clean-up ops. Pilot here gets to jockey a radio.

Raise a fucking glass.

She sure is. Ship’s watering hole is one thing that’s still up and running, might as well drown your sorrows. Whatcha drinkin, you ask her. Degreaser, she says, and it sure does smell like it when she throws one back.

Bullshit, she says again when she sets her glass down, waving over the barkeep with an impatient flick of her small hand. Fuckin’ bullshit.

Tell me about it, you say, diving into your own glass.

She won’t, of course. She’s not going to tell _you_. Gamma Squad. Yeah, right.

But there’s a story there. There’s always a story.


	2. The Reds

The sim troops at Sidewinder have a story.

Those shitass mop-ups they keep handing you? This is another one, or so you think. You have a single objective. Red Base. Kill everyone. Well, that’s not how they put it exactly. Eliminate all targets. Not even some fancy black ops speak like _neutralize_.

Thing is, the Reds are ready for you. The _Reds_. Are _ready for you_. This does not happen. You’ve been on dozens of sim drops since your unlucky ass landed in this godforsaken program and never, not once, has a sim team been prepared for your attack.

They get Kentucky with a sticky to the skull.

That shakes up the remaining three of you a fucking lot, you don’t mind saying, because you’ve seen some KIAs, okay, you’ve seen some shit out there but a Freelancer taken out by sim troops?

Jesus.

The Reds know you’re coming, and they mean to keep you out.

Sidewinder has a secret, you see. Something more than a flag.

 

It’s cold. It’s cold as fuck. You eye the readings on your HUD and wonder how long it would take you to die with your helmet off. You wonder this while your surviving squaddies are bickering about what to do next and whether you need to recover Kentucky’s body.

“We’re not recovery agents,” you say. And the armor’s not worth shit anyway. Not like that discount spartan rainbow brite crap the Alphas wear. Wore. Plus it’s starting to snow. Visibility’s gonna go to shit. Be hell getting back to extraction if it gets bad, without more dead weight.

“You don’t carry them, idiot,” snaps Idaho. “You just take their equipment.”

 _“What equipment,”_ you growl. Fucking Gamma squad. You don’t even have--

“I thought they just blew them up,” says Jersey.

“No, they delete the _AIs_. You have to recover the armor.”

You stare down at the cavernous remains of Kentucky’s helmet.

“How would you even know--”

“Both of you, shut the fuck up,” you say. “I hear something.”

 

You hear the Reds, as it happens. True to form, they’re chattering on an unsecured channel. Now that’s the kind of sim trooper quality you’ve come to know and love.

_“It’s not the black one.”_

_“You sure? Lemme see--”_

_“No, gimme that--”_

There’s some scuffling noises and static. Then a third voice.

_“I don’t care who they are. They’re still Freelancers.”_

 

If this were a real combat scenario (what the fuck is that) you’d be on the lookout for snipers but you’ve never in your life met a sim trooper who could use a sniper rifle for anything but spying on the other team and making dick jokes and even if this team is different, you keep moving because you don’t have much choice. Idaho’s getting real twitchy. Hasn’t been right for a long time, not since that one teleporter incident and maybe not ever, but that’s Gamma Squad for you. Alphas so much as sneeze and they get hours-long one-on-one debriefs with the Counselor or the Director himself (who you’ve never even seen in the flesh). Coming unglued on Gamma Squad won’t even get you a twenty-minute psych eval with a junior medic.

You don’t have too much time to be bitter. Nah, that’s a lie, you have plenty of time to be bitter even as you get close to the base and rifle fire starts pelting the snow around your feet. You’re plenty capable of feeling bitter while you’re diving for what cover you can find in a copse of half-dead trees and the snow drifted up around their scrawny trunks. You’re a hell of a multitasker.

You’re also starting to wonder if maybe you’re the ones getting mopped up here.

 

But the Reds’ aim is about what you’d expect. Must’ve been a lucky throw. Poor Kentucky.

“Attention dirtbags!” Oh. They’re talking to you now. “We have you surrounded!” You’re pretty sure that’s a lie, considering the shots were all coming from the direction of the base and the fuckers wear bright red armor. Even with the flakes coming heavy all around you, you’re pretty sure you’d see them. “Drop your weapons and surrender.”

Well, you don’t do that, because you’re still willing to bet against the Reds’ aim, especially in this weather.

“What are we waiting for,” Idaho hisses, on the edge of hysteria, rising out of the snowbank. Blasts some suppressing fire in the direction of the base and that’s something, at least. Jersey follows and you follow too, because what else is there to do.

“Freeze!” the Red leader--you think it’s the leader--squawks over the radio. “Don’t come any closer! Drop your weapons!” More rifle fire pits the snow, Jersey gets nicked in the shoulder but the armor takes it. You stay low, not that it matters. You spot a flash of red on the roof and Idaho unloads a full clip at it.

You hear some muffled cursing over the radio.

Then, shakily: “This is your last chance to surrender!”

 

The Reds are three, huddled in their tiny concrete base with no doors in the middle of the frozen wasteland, rifles trained on you as you enter with yours trained on them. They’ve got this little sandbag wall they’re crouched behind. It’s barely waist-height. One of the bags is ripped open and spilling sand onto the frosty floor.

“Who are you?” demands the Red who sounds like the leader, the barrel of a sniper rifle trembling a little when he speaks. “Why did you come here? We don’t have it! The black one has it at Blue Base! Go there!”

“We’re not here for your _flag_ ,” Jersey says. “Chill.” Yeah. Just here to kill you. Keep the flag though! Sad thing is, some of the sims you’ve met, that line might’ve worked.

The leader doesn’t even seem to hear it. “I’m telling you, it’s not here! We don’t have it.”

“Don’t have _what_ , for fuck’s sake?”

“We don’t know!” The leader’s voice is edging higher and higher, starting to sound a lot like Idaho sounds and for the first time you realize how _scared_  the Reds are, they’re fucking terrified of you and it’s weird, because you got sent here to kill them and you’re only now thinking about that. “The _thing_. Whatever it was they brought to Blue Base from the ship. The thing the black one came for. Then the teal one after.”

“What _who_ brought from the ship?”

“A Blue. A new one. Never seen him before but he had blue armor. They trusted him. He brought something to the base and they let him in and then the black one came after that and they tried to fight him off but he killed them, he killed them all. The teal one came after. Just looked around and left. You can go look for yourself. We don’t have it. We don’t fucking have it! You want it, you go to Blue Base.”

The black one? The teal one?

“Agent Texas is alive?” you say.

“Who cares,” says Jersey.

“Agent _Carolina_ is alive?”

“Who fucking cares,” Idaho screeches. “We’re fucking finishing this! _I’m not moving down the board!_ ”

The Reds yelp and duck behind their pitiful sandbag wall as Idaho opens fire and you sigh wearily and draw your sidearm and shoot Idaho in the head.

Jersey screams. You hear that scream echo off the concrete walls. You keep hearing that scream, in the silence that follows, sharp and cold as ice. You think you’re going to be hearing that scream for a damn long time.

The Reds peer over their cover, staring at you. Just staring.

“Stop looking at me. Stay inside. Don’t call Command. Don’t call anyone. Turn your radios off. Stay dark, and maybe they won’t send anyone else to kill you.”

 

 


	3. The Blues

It’s a long trudge and with the snow coming down thick you give up on vis altogether and just follow the marker on your HUD. Jersey trails behind you, silent. Blue Base is about how the Red leader described. Your boot hits armor, a dead Blue almost completely covered up in snow. Squinting through the white, you can see another slumped on the roof.

Jersey refuses to go inside with you. “I’m not fighting Agent Texas!”

“Who said we’re fighting her?” But you leave Jersey outside in the snow. Who even cares.

Another Blue dead inside, slumped against the far wall. Thrown, maybe. No bullet marks in the armor.

And no Agent Texas, but you figured that. One of those teleporters in the back of the base. You figured that too. Aren’t you clever. And no one around to witness it. What a crying shame.

Looked around and left, they said. The teal one. You glance back toward the base entrance. No chance of tracking, not in this weather. Any footprints are gone by now. Figures.

There’s a story here. Too bad no one’s left to tell you.

You stare into the shimmer of inhuman technology thieved from god knows who and god knows where and brought to this godforsaken hellhole for god knows what and for a minute you really think about stepping right through it because no matter what’s on the other side, no matter _what_ , it can’t be worse than being here.

Don’t kid yourself, Gamma squaddie.

If there’s one thing Freelancer’s taught you, it’s that it can always get worse.

“Hey,” says Jersey, who’s come inside after all, got something plucked out of the snow. “You know what this is?”


	4. The Pilot

The pilot--you still think of her as _the pilot_ , hell, you don’t even know her name--has a desk way down in the ship’s communications center which is pretty dead these days. Lot of empty desks. The _Invention_ sits in orbit over the planet she ploughed into weeks ago. A miracle they got her back up there in the first place. Still under repair, and it seems like her crew keeps dwindling by the day. Sent down to the planet, you guess, though no one talks about what they’re doing there.

The corridor’s dim and the blue track lights make you feel cold. So many empty little cubicles, some of them still with a photograph or two tacked up, a scatter of paperwork, a handset lying askew on the desk. Hard to tell who’s coming back, who’s left for good.

The pilot doesn’t hear you come up, seeings as she’s got earbuds in both ears blasting some metal cacophony you can hear from five feet away. You have to wave to get her eyes to snap up. Gesture a few times before she arches her eyebrows and plucks her earbuds out, one after the other. “Yeah?”

Take a deep breath. “I need your help.”

The pilot’s eyes narrow. Okay, cool, you aren’t quite _pals_ , you get that, but what other shot do you have. “What do you want?”

Want? You want out of here. You want to go _home_ for chrissake, if home even exists anymore, maybe see your sister and brother one last time before the Covies turn every last colony in the galaxy into a bunch of shiny glass Christmas ornaments with Earth as the fucking star at the top.

“I know Agent Carolina’s alive. I know you helped her.”

Oh, the look on her face. You know you fucked up, you know it instantly, good fucking going, this is why you never got off Gamma Squad even when the missions were real (were they ever?) and the board was real. This is why you’re gonna die out here and never see anyone you love ever again. You spectacular fuckup. You fucking piece of shit. Showing your hand like that. Just lay it right out there why don’t you. You’re a winner and a half.

You didn’t realize she still carried a pistol. Now you're staring down the barrel.

“That’s a cute story, Alaska. You got any other stories?”

Hands up, Agent Alaska. Talk for your shitty life.

“I didn’t tell anyone, I _swear_. And I’m not gonna. I just thought--I know, I know she was your friend, I know I’m just a Gamma, we’re shit, we’re _nothing_ , I get it, I just…”

You can’t even spit it out. _Thought you might help us._ Please. This is, without a doubt, the worst idea you ever had. Just shut up and let her shoot you.

The pilot lowers her pistol and sighs.

“I got nothin’ for you, kid,” she says flatly. “No flight clearance. I can’t even get into the fucking hangar. Hell. Rumor is, they’re sending me planetside.”

She shrugs, and lays the pistol on her desk. You feel all your adrenaline draining out, and you wonder, like you do every day, why you’re still here.

“Even if I could get you out…” she says, looking you right in the eye, “where in the hell would you go?”


	5. The Box

You wouldn’t have known a CVDR from your ass but Jersey’s good with that technical shit. The two of you snuck into one of those classrooms the Alphas used to use and Jersey showed you how to access the data off the thing.

After you talk to the pilot and watch your one shot go belly-up you go back and listen to the recording again. Hell if you know why. Maybe because you like torturing yourself like that.

Maybe just because there’s a story there. One you’ll never know the whole of. But a story.

 

The voices get crackly, hard to understand, but you know one of them for sure. Your pilot friend (no, not _your_ pilot, and not really your friend, either). Sharp, like at her desk. Not slurred and muttering like at the bar.

The other, you know only from the name.

 

_“—christ, what happened to your helmet? C’mon, Carolina, gonna get you out of here.”_

_“Can't leave. Not yet.”_

_“Honey, you’re a mess. Shit, did you hit your head? You’re probably dehydrated as hell. Come on _—_ ”_

_“She's still here."_

_“Carolina, who?”_

_“Texas! Goddamn it, Texas! She's down here somewhere, I have to find her _—_ ”_

_“What _—_ ”_

_“I'm not going back empty-handed! Not another failed mission! Not again _—_ ”_

_“Carolina, they're not coming back for you!”_

Silence.

_“The Director didn't send me. No one sent me. They think you're dead. They're not coming, Carolina. There is no mission. There is no nothing except me and my goddamn boat and you are getting on it and we are leaving.”_

_“But she was here. She was here, look at them, it had to have been her.”_

_“Mal...”_

The voices get softer, fade in and out. You always lose the conversation at this point, but it comes back a minute or two later, loud and clear.

_"What're they gonna do when they find out you flew without authorization?"_

_"Probably ground me and stick me behind a desk."_

_“Lace.”_

No answer from the pilot.

_“You didn’t have to _—_ ”_

_“Of course I didn’t. Now shut up and strap in.”_

_“Where we going?”_

_“Up to you, I guess. Come on, Carolina, we’ll figure something out.”_ An indecipherable noise. _“And throw this out the back hatch, will y _—_ ”_

Static.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For our purposes here, Niner and Carolina's names are Lacey and Mallory, respectively. My thanks go to [Larissa](http://archiveofourown.org/users/larissa) for the name Mallory.


End file.
